In several of my most recent posts I have mentioned "self-selected vocabulary" or from this point forward SSV which is a strategy that my district coordinator introduced me to when I came into the district where I now teach. I am not an expert on this principle yet, but I am extremely intrigued by it, and it has become a bit of a pet project for me this year.

SSV is basically creating learning experiences in which students to discover vocabulary through comprehensible input (reading or audio), make sense of it on their own and then allowing them to choose what is meaningful to them and record it themselves.It is important to say that there has to be some scaffolding or some strategies in place for guiding students to inquire about the right words and I will say more about this a little later in this post. For now, let's explore some characteristics of how vocabulary is generated in the world language classroom.

The Traditional Vocabulary List

Teacher or textbook generated list

Many times it is glossed in English as well

Presented at the beginning of lesson or unit

Usually a fairly long list

A broad list in hopes of covering all the possibilities within that theme

What I do for SSV:

Use highly comprehensible vocabulary in a strand as a model for the types of words students should be looking for / inquiring about.

Graphic organizers as guides for students to process the language they are about to use for a communicative task.

Provide comprehensible text in which the vocabulary strand is in the spotlight.

Provide non-linguistic visuals labeled with TL vocabulary

Self-selected Vocabulary

Presented as whole language in text or audio within a context related to learning targets

Never glossed in English, but presented with non-linguistic representations (visuals) or embedded in text or audio that is comprehensible to the learner

Presented gradually throughout the lesson or unit

Only a few terms are presented at one time

Vocabulary that is presented is limited to allow students to inquire about words and phrases they are interested in

All About Me - Graphic Organizer - This is totally open ended to allow novice students to inquire about personalized vocabulary. This works well with an organizer in which the teacher models what is true about his/herself.

I've taught using both methods of vocabulary acquisition, but I really prefer SSV for so many reasons. First, using SSV takes the pressure off of me to come up with the perfect vocabulary list for a unit. I have never seen or created a vocabulary list myself that was actually perfect. There was always something that was overlooked. Second, a vocabulary list often means there will be a vocabulary quiz of some sort. This is assessing students only at the word level of language proficiency and has nothing to do with how well they can communicate in the language because it only holds the students accountable for what they can memorize. Also, vocabulary lists often cause student anxiety because they fear having to learn a long list of words. Most of the words the students really master are the ones that are meaningful to them and that they would use in their own interactions in the language, thus words that are not meaningful to them will likely be forgotten or only recognized, but not used in their speech or writing unless in a very inauthentic situation contrived by the teacher. Another interesting aspect of SSV is that it lends well to collaborative learning. Since the vocabulary students are learning is highly personalized, they can support each other by sharing the vocabulary they each know when a classmate suddenly needs a word that they know and he/she doesn't. The class can also work together to decide what are the essential vocabulary words versus personalized words that could be considered optional or based on interests. I also love that vocabulary acquisition never ends in my classroom and there are no limits to what my students and I can learn about any topic we are studying!

There are so many more reasons why SSV is, in my opinion, the better, more authentic way to teach a second language, but I will leave some of them up to you to discover for yourselves. Remember when you are looking for new ways to do things in your instruction, don't toss everything and start over. Just take one idea and try it out to see how it goes. Test it out a couple more times to compare it to old practices, then evaluate which works better. Don't let the idea of SSV overwhelm you and talk you out of giving it a try.

Great ideas. I am in the food unit with my 3rd grade class and I take a picture of every single meal that I eat. Students love this because it is meaningful to them. Also, I like to "generate" vocabulary WITH students. This way they have ownership of the new words.

Before this post, I had envisioned SSV only as language that students requested or independently looked up in order to personalize their message during/in preparation for a task. Oftentimes, we might look at our unit Performance Targets/Can Do statements together as a class and brainstorm words students would need for the unit. But I'm very intrigued about the idea of SSV coming from "whole language in text or audio". It makes me reflect on my own process of self-selecting which unfamiliar vocabulary I'll look up when I read for pleasure in my L2 of Japanese: I usually only look up unfamiliar words I encounter repeatedly in a short time frame, or am capable of making partial inferences about on my own. I'll have to reflect how this might inform instructional choices I make about vocabulary next year.

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